You did everything right. So why do you feel empty?

The Tuesday Test: Why your successful life feels empty + what actually changes everything

You achieved everything you were supposed to want. So why does Tuesday at 2:47 PM feel like an existential crisis?

This isn't about "finding yourself"—it's about soft rebellions, small pauses, and how you find yourself again (one unglamorous moment at a time).

The Tuesday Test: Why Your Successful Life Feels Like a Dumpster Fire

Last Tuesday at 2:47 PM, I watched a woman in Albert Heijn have what I can only describe as a grocery cart existential crisis.

Designer handbag. Wedding ring that cost more than most people’s car. Two perfectly dressed girls asking if they could have the organic fruit snacks.

She stood there, staring at her phone, and I heard her whisper: "This can't be it."

I pretended to study the yogurt labels, clutching a bag of salt and vinegar chips I absolutely did not need, (and a bunch of bananas I’d never eat) but really I was thinking: Sister, I see you.

The thing nobody mentions about getting everything you wanted.

The job that looks impressive but makes you feel sick. The house that's perfect but doesn't quite feel like home. The relationship that works on paper but leaves you drained and empty.

You did everything right. Checked all the boxes. Became the woman everyone said you should become.

And now you're standing in the cereal aisle wondering if should was the trap all along.

I've been that woman.

What I learned from my own grocery store moments

There’s this thing that happens when you spend years reading rooms instead of reading yourself. You get good—scarily good—at delivering what others expect. You become fluent in other people’s languages: success, productivity, likability.

But somewhere along the way, you forget your own.

If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing, it’s this: you get to want what you want, and it’s more than okay if that turns out to look different (and better) than you ever imagined.

The Tuesday test (or whatever day works for you)

This isn’t about dramatic life overhauls or finding yourself on a mountaintop. It’s simpler than that.

Next week, pick a random moment—Tuesday at 2:47 PM, or whenever—and stop. Look around.
Ask yourself: If no one could see my choices right now, what would I do differently?

Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s ordering the ridiculously expensive cheese with truffle flecks. Maybe it’s taking the long way home because you like the trees on that street better.

Small things. Tiny acts of listening to yourself instead of the voice that’s always calculating what you should want.

What I'm learning about small rebellions

The women I know who seem most at home in their lives? They’re not the ones who burned everything down. They’re the ones who started saying no to tiny things that didn’t fit.

No to the lunch they didn’t want. No to the conversation that drained them. No to explaining their choices to people who weren’t really asking.

No to picking up the phone when they didn’t recognize the number. No to staying at the party when their social battery reached 10%.

They stopped being so accommodating to lives that felt borrowed.

The thing about timing

You’re not behind schedule. There’s no deadline you missed.

The woman you’re becoming isn’t waiting in some future, shinier version of your life. She’s here, in the messy middle, somewhere between what you’re doing and what you actually want to do.

She’s in that small, stubborn pause before you say yes out of habit.
She’s in the moment you reach for the expensive moisturizer because that’s the one you like.
She’s there in the quiet, when you close the fridge and stand barefoot on the cool tile, letting yourself breathe for an extra second before moving on.

I used to think I’d find her in some sweeping, cinematic moment.
Turns out, she always arrives in those in-between spaces on Tuesday afternoons, in the hush after the phone stops buzzing.

A small experiment (if you want)

For the next week, every time you catch yourself doing something you don’t really want to do, notice it. Don’t change anything. Just notice.

See what happens when you start paying attention to the gap between your automatic responses and your actual preferences.

Maybe it happens when you're rinsing out your coffee mug, catching your reflection in the oven door, or scooping chocolate cake out of the fridge with your fingers at midnight because nobody's watching.

That’s where your real life is hiding.

Maybe that’s all the Tuesday Test ever was:
The quiet decision to live like nobody’s watching, especially when you know they are.

P.S. What’s your version of the Albert Heijn moment—the split-second you realized your ‘successful’ life didn’t actually feel like yours?

Hit reply. Tell me. I read every single one—and your story might be exactly what another woman needs to see herself a little more clearly.